minutes/may_5_2006

The minutes of TAB meetings are provided for informational purposes
only. Discussions and decisions described in the minutes should not
be interpreted as official or definitive TAB or OSDL policy. While
efforts are made to ensure their accuracy and completeness, we regret
we cannot guarantee that they are. If you have corrections or additions,
please contact tech-board at lists.osdl.org

1) Add the Documentation Project Proposal to the Fellowship Fund request
queue.
2) James will craft an email response to Xensource about the TAB's
recommendation regarding their proposal. He will post it to the TAB
mailing list before officially sending to Xensource.
3) Leann will email the LWE folks to ask about any travel sponsorship
programs they may have in place to reimburse LWE travel expenses for
presenters.
4) Leann will email member companies to see if they would be interested
in sponsoring a FreedomHEC dinner or helping cover costs of T-shirts.
5) James will inform those individuals who will be migrated from the
existing private TAB mailing list to the public one.
6) The TAB requested that there be a top level page with a short summary
of each project proposal for the Fellowship Fund web site.
7) The TAB also asked that the majority of the documents that reside on
the Fellowship Fund web site should be direct web content and not Open
Office document downloads.

Documentation Project Proposal

Looks fine. Only minor comments. . . One is to have the TAB or Greg put
their name the proposal. Matt noted there are minor edits that need to
be made. TAB will proceed by adding it to the Fellowship Fund Request
queue.

Xensource Request

Xensource is wanting to collaborate up with OSDL to set up a
guest/hypervisor certification program. The recommendation of the TAB
is that this is not in the best interest for OSDL. The first arguement
is that not enough code from Xen has not been pushed upsteam and their
effort to do so is not very apparent. If OSDL agrees to a certification
program, it goes against the community and will hinder the community's
wishes and efforts for Xen to first get their code pushed upstream.
Assuming Xen can sort out up and down stream issues OSDL at that point
could arrange to help with a testing effort; automated functional and/or
regression testing type of work. The TAB noted that doing certification
work is a huge political minefield and OSDL should steer clear. Once
code has been merged into mainline, someone like LSB could be asked to
document the ABI. The TAB recommends to not act on a proposal like
this. James will craft an email reply to Xensource and post it to the
TAB mailing list before officially sending to Xensource.

Travel Fund

It would help to try to establish a travel fund. However, some TAB
members felt LWE would not be in the scope of the travel fund. LWE is
more commercial and the TAB wanted to focus on funding travel to
developer conferences. Also, using it just for TAB members is not the
goal of this fund it should be open to the entire community. It was
also noted that there are two types of traveling that seem to be
happening; general travel and OSDL related travel (ex being asked to
present at LWE, the OSDL Face to Face, etc.). The TAB recommended that
they request a travel budget from OSDL that would pay for OSDL-TAB
related traveling, and then establish the general travel fund. Leann
will also ping the LWE folks to ask about any travel sponsorship
programs they may have in place to reimburse LWE travel expenses for
presenters.

The other note that needs to be mentioned is that it is VERY
inappropriate/rude to email any TAB member's manager asking them to pay
for travel expenses, especially when someone has already voiced their
company is unable to pay. The TAB noted they are here representing a
part of the community, not their individual companies.

FreedomHEC

Greg received another email about supporting/sponsoring the FreedomHEC
conference. The TAB feels they've done a reasonable job supporting
FreedomHEC already. The storage summit has even accommodated having
their meeting right before FreedomHEC to bring more people in. Leann
will ping some other member companies to see if they would be interested
in sponsoring a dinner ($500 total) or helping pay for T-shirts
($12/shirt or $6/shirt if they can get a big enough volume).

Mailing list subscription requests

How does the TAB want to handle subscriptions to the TAB mailing list
from individuals who are not directly associated of a member of the TAB
itself? That individual should send an email to the TAB stating why
they want or need to be on the list. The main reason we need to keep a
closed mailing list is that the minutes need to be approved by the TAB
before they are made public. However, the TAB did feel that the mailing
list should be as open and transparent as possible. It was suggested
that the TAB create a new mailing list that anyone can subscribe to and
the TAB will hold all general discussions there. The existing mailing
list will be kept private and individuals who are not members of the TAB
or directly affiliated to the TAB will be migrated over to the new
public list. The existing mailing list will receive the con call
minutes and approve them at which time they will be posted to the
general list. James will inform those individuals who will be migrated
from the private to the public list.

Get the Documentation Proposal that Greg generated into the Fellowship
Fund Request queue. The TAB requested that there be a top level page
with a short summary of each project proposal. The TAB also asked that
the majority of the documents that reside on the Fellowship Fund web
page should be direct web content and not open office doc downloads.
Once Tom returns he can call an interim meeting (7 days notice of
course) to discuss more.